The Wisdom Wall

“for trying to grow a SAS business content, by the way, is a really hard way to grow a business. Like go from zero to one and like basic, like no traction to simple traction. Um, and that's what I was trying to do. But if you don't have the community already, it's very hard to do.”

“We used to have something in there where we, we had another score for individual performance. Um, and we took that out. We basically decided we're going to set a high bar for performance, just like to work at this company and everyone wins and loses together.”

“So I think of short-term versus long-term compensation, and I think of guaranteed versus performance-based. So short-term guaranteed is salary. Uh, long-term guaranteed is like for one K match, you know, retirement, um, short-term performance-based is profit sharing and long-term performance-based is equity.”

“for trying to grow a SAS business content, by the way, is a really hard way to grow a business. Um, Like go from zero to one and like basic, like no traction to simple traction. Um, and that's what I was trying to do. But if you don't have the community already, it's very hard to do.”

“We used to have something in there where we, we had another score for individual performance. Um, and we took that out and we basically decided we're going to set a high bar for performance, just like to work at this company default and everyone wins and loses together.”

“So I think of, uh, compensation in two different ways that kind of makes a quadrant. So I think of short-term versus long-term compensation, and I think of guaranteed versus performance-based. So short-term guaranteed is salary. Uh, long-term guaranteed is like for one K match, you know, retirement, um, short-term…”

“then you're looking at what it takes to add an additional million dollars in, uh, Value in the enterprise value for ConvertKit versus what it takes to go make a million dollars somewhere else. And it's just an order of magnitude more effort to do it in, uh, real estate investing or something like that because…”

“asking the questions will not decrease the number of people that make it from, uh, you know, account signup page to create an account.”

“what I look for is the key metric, which is GMV and then the counterbalancing metric. And so in this case, we're looking to drive the most GMB. Um, that's the main thing. Small creators, big creators all contribute to that, but obviously the big creators drive far more. And then I have a counterbalancing metric of, I…”

“we have this unsplash, uh, collection of creator photos. If you'd like, we'll release those. You know, if you sign off on it and you're up for it, we'll release those photos, um, on unsplash as part of our convert kit, you know, creator collection. And that has, like, there's millions and millions of downloads of those…”

“So it's basically external discovery first, and then later do the internal once the platform is bigger.”

“what it takes to add an additional million dollars in, um, Value in the enterprise value for ConvertKit versus what it takes to go make a million dollars somewhere else. And it's just an order of magnitude more effort to do it in, uh, real estate investing or something like that because ConvertKit has so much momentum.”

“And so what I look for is the key metric, which is GMV and then the counterbalancing metric. And so in this case, we're looking to drive the most GMV. Um, that's the main thing. Small creators, big creators all contribute to that, but obviously the big creators drive far more. And then I have a counterbalancing metric…”

“So it's basically external discovery first, and then later do the internal once the platform is bigger.”

“the annual push has a big impact on churn. And especially when you're going after kind of a prosumer audience, you know, the lower end of the spectrum at that thousand subscribers or less, they might be trying out blogging. They might not be super well established. And so the churn is higher on those plans. So whatever…”

“If in signup, they said they have 2000 subscribers. Now we know that our, our single goal is to get them to import those subscribers. And so it can totally change the activation metrics based on who they are.”